


Source Decay

by little_murmaider



Series: I Hope You Die. I Hope We Both Die. [4]
Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: And loves people knowing he loves books, Cute bookshop dates, Is it name dropping when it's books, M/M, Magnus loves books, Not so cute other dates, allusions to sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 23:28:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13421886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/little_murmaider/pseuds/little_murmaider
Summary: Magnus remembers a good day.





	Source Decay

The ending was so bad it poisoned everything that came before it, but if Magnus concentrated, he could remember a time when things between them were good.  
  
Nathan wouldn’t tell Magnus where they were going, but he insisted,  _ insisted _ it was worth the trip. He borrowed his mother’s car and drove 15 miles east, to a crummy stripmall just off Interstate 4. Wedged between a dry cleaners and a payday loan joint was a combination record store and bookseller. The skinny storefront, with its tattered awning and windows plastered with outdated local event flyers, belied a deep interior. Upon entering, Magnus felt as though he had stepped into a pocket dimension. There was so  _ much _ . Wooden stacks so jammed with books the centers of the shelves bowed beneath the weight. Milk crates stuffed with vinyls, balanced precariously on shaky folding tables. An ex-hippie with fried grey hair and half-moon glasses, sipping from a chipped Garfield mug. Nathan made a beeline for a crate marked  **ROCK ETC** . Magnus stooped to pet a chubby tuxedo cat, sprawled across an open copy of  _ Rolling Stone _ .  
  
“Hey,” Nathan said, glancing over his shoulder. “ _ Don’t _ .”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You  _ know _ what.”  
  
_ What _ was purchasing half a dozen books to add to the parapets of unread books piled around his bedroom. A repeat tactical error.   
  
“C’mon, Nate. Give me a little credit.”  
  
Magnus heard the smirk in his voice.   
  
“Why? You haven’t  _ earned _ it.”  
  
The cat scampered off and he stood, rapping his knuckles between Nathan’s shoulder blades as he breezed passed. Just to browse. Have a little look-see. Peruse the wares. Probably wouldn’t find anything worthwhile. Well, he  _ did _ need to replace his copy of  _ Infinite Jest _ , the one at home was falling apart. So he grabbed that. And he’d been meaning to check out  _ A Confederacy of Dunces _ , and look, there it was, so he nabbed that, too. And that edition of Hemingway short stories was really rare, tough to find, not picking that would be such a waste—   
  
By the time he circled back to Nathan, he was loaded down with at least 15 texts. Nathan held opposite corners of  _ Frampton Comes Alive! _ and spun the album like a globe. As Magnus laid out his finds, Nathan shook his head in slow, bitter disappointment.  
  
“Mistakes were made,” Magnus said.   
  
“God you’re such a nerd,” Nathan laughed. “If we went to the same high school I would have shoved you into so many lockers.”  
  
An ember of a thought-- _ when Magnus was commiting sections of  _ The Stranger _ to memory as a high school senior Nathan was memorizing state capitals and learning long division _ \--quickly snuffed out. The wheels would come off this thing between them if either bothered to think it through.  
  
Nathan’s rough fingers dragged across the sliver of Magnus’s exposed torso.   
  
“Hey now, Magnus muttered with mock chiding. He flipped over each of his treasures until all of the covers were face down. “Not in front of  _ the children _ .”  
  
Nathan stole a glimpse at the owner to see if they’d caught his attention. Realizing they hadn’t, he snuck his hand beneath Magnus’s shirt and let it settle against his ribs. Pushing their hips together, he leaned in close and then   
  
  
  
What?   
  
  
  


Magnus couldn’t remember.    
  


He thought back, his mind a multi-track record player, every memory an LP stacked on top of one another into an indefinite and unassailable tower. An album dropped into place. The needle found the ridge. Something else started playing.   
  
_ Click. New track.  
  
_ The abandoned warehouse where the band rehearsed. Nathan, hunched against an amp, dumbbell clutched in his fist. Raising it slow, focused, from his hip, to his chest, hip, to chest.   
  
“This is a hammer curl.”  
  
Weight dropped. Sly smile. Hands in hair.  
  
“And  _ this _ is a Hammer _ smith _ curl."  
  
_ Scratch. Click. New track.  
  
_ The stench of garbage. Brick wall damp with slime. The distant, infrequent illumination of brake lights. Nathan staring up, wiping his mouth with the collar of his shirt.  
  
_ Scratch. Click. New track.   
  
_ A sticky booth in Burger King. The bad one, the one walking distance from the apartment. Tears came as they always did, like a fastball to his synapses. He pushed his hands up his face, trying to put them back into his eyeballs. Nathan’s voice was tired. Annoyed.  
  
“Oh,” he said. “This again.”  
  
_ Scratch _ .  _ Click. New track.  _    
  
Darkness. A figure loomed. Big. Face unreadable. Arms painted in blood.   
  
“If I knew you would be so  _ messy _ ,” voice so low it rumbling at the base of Magnus’s spine. “I wouldn’t have bothered.”   
  
_ Scratch. Static. _ _   
_ __   
  
  


  
He could not remember how that day in the record and book store ended. So he made one up.  
  
They sat behind a shopping cart depository in a Publix parking lot. A bottle of vodka sweating in a brown paper bag. Magnus’s purchases in his lap.  
  
Nathan tapped the cover of a yellowing copy of _The Sun Also Rises_. “I know this guy.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“We read some of his shit in high school. Blew his brains out, right?”  
  
“Shotgun.” Magnus put two fingers in his mouth, clicked his thumb, jerked his head back. “ ** _Blammo_**.”  
  
“Brutal. He lived down here. Not _here_ here, but.” He waved vaguely in the distance. “Key West.”  
  
Magnus nodded. A one-footed seagull hobbled across the lot. The drone of the nearby highway filled the silence.   
  
“You can tour his house now,” Nathan continued. “They got all these _uhhhhhhh_ six toed cats living there. Like, a shit ton. Like,” he stopped, counted off on his fingers. “40.”   
  
“Oh, yeah?”  
  
“Maybe, uh.”  He turned to look at him, into the sun, squeezing one eye closed and squinting the other so all that was visible was a slice of green. “Maybe you and I can go down there together sometime.”  
  
The oil slicks against the tar were prismatic puddles. Even as he lived it, Magnus could feel this moment slipping away from him. A story half-remembered. A mostly-forgotten song.  
  
“Yeah” He leaned his shoulder into Nathan’s. “Maybe."  
  
Even if it didn’t go like that it didn’t matter. Because everyone deserved to have a good day. Even bad people. Even him.

 


End file.
